


Waters and the Wild

by clutzycricket



Series: Innana's Hounds [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Azkaban aftereffects, Conspiracy Theories, F/M, Mary Sue Big Bang, Muggle/Wizard Relations, Necromancy, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 02:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5189249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/pseuds/clutzycricket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a muggle bride, the magical world can feel like a gilded cage, especially with the alarming whispers starting to take place around Sirius. But Jenna isn’t quite as dim or helpless as some people seem to think she is, and with her own bag of tricks, they can survive a year and a day, right?</p><p>(Well, with Sirius, that might be asking a lot.)</p><p>Set between Halloween 1993 and November 1st 1994.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A note- this story is less a traditional narrative then a puzzle beginning to fall into place, or a series of snapshots.

" _Come away, O human child!_

_To the waters and the wild_

_With a faery, hand in hand._

_For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."_

\- "The Stolen Child", William Butler Yeats 

 

 

_**November** _

 

The idea of living in a magical castle had sounded exciting for all of about… ooh, five minutes? Sure, Jenna had her fairy tale phase the way any other girl had done, and she could see how her story paralleled those tales, both the Disney-ish ones and the darker tales her grandparents had told her with sad eyes, their touched little girl.

 

After all, she had rescued a knight, both from those chasing him and from himself, helped right a great wrong, and gotten married.

 

Only the knight still had nightmares, most nights, and she wasn’t sure if he’d be fully saved. Not unless he admitted he needed it. And their marriage was basically so she wouldn’t get her memories of the past three months erased, because spouses were exempt from some international law.

 

Okay, so, she wouldn’t kick Sirius out of bed for eating crackers. Again. Not that he was at a healthy weight and the work they’d done to help him learn to move like a normal person were working, he was getting back to reasonably attractive, plus he was sharp and witty.

 

It was just… well, she hadn’t realized quite how interestingly wizards thought of non-magical people. (Mind, not all of her thoughts on wizards were very nice, especially in regards to basic human rights and safety standards.)

 

There was a stigma about non-magical things, with students who weren’t born to the world being pressured to adapt, and feeling awkward mentioning things like pens. Really. Pens. And those who were born to the wizarding world seemed to have really, really weird impressions of what nonmagical items did.

 

So Jenna had taken to hiding in her room, a bit, occasionally walking the grounds with an honor guard she hadn’t quite gotten the point of at first.

 

“Some of the students aren’t happy you’re here,” Oliver Wood, a Scottish boy who was apparently in charge of Harry’s sports team, told her. “We just want to prevent any accidents.”

 

She’d frowned and she looked at the children around her, reminding herself it wasn’t that much better at home. Her apartment was at a shitty neighborhood right over a place a that was basically a thinly disguised strip club.

 

Yes, but at home the government doesn’t issue deadly weapons to all eleven year olds, a nasty little voice whispered in the back of her mind.

 

She pushed it aside and when someone started a soccer game, and she cheerfully played referee, getting into a good natured argument over the name of the sport with the boy who transfigured the ball.

 

She missed her wifi, her connection with home and the people she trusted to have her back, but she knew the terms of her agreement.

 

A year and a day, and not all of it would be at this school. She wouldn’t be Persephone, locked away from all she knew and loved.

 

After all, she told herself, Persephone didn’t have Skype.

 

She still missed Sirius, though, who had some sort of surprise planned, and needed to clear out his house.

 

“Some of it will be magic, JJ,” he admitted, shrugging, “and after twelve years it’ll be acting out. I know you want out, but it’s better here for a bit then Saint Mungo’s for a month. I have my bank account, and trust me when I say the goblins didn’t freeze it. The interest between that and the Black vaults is enough you don’t have to worry about money.”

 

“I don’t need your money,” Jenna said, trying not to remember her last bank balance. After the disaster of finding him trying to study her notes on her investigations on the sheer weirdness of the Black manhunt, and Sirius explaining what really happened, she had agreed to ferry him to Scotland as quickly as his health and her sense allowed, and she had skipped over a number of possible article locations to get him here.

 

“What’s mine is yours,” he pointed out, grasping her hands. “Besides, I think I owe you for medical supplies and food.”

 

“I’ll accept that,” Jenna compromised, and then looked into the possibility of working with the Muggle Studies professor while she was here.

 

That… would not have worked. Her heart was in the right place, but the fine details and means kept getting thrown off, leaving Jenna off-kilter in the one discussion she had with the professor.

 

She just needed to go home, but whether that was laughing over silly things with Sirius or curling up in her shoebox apartment back in the States she wasn’t sure.

 

Sirius was done two weeks after his release, beaming and bouncing a bit. “It’s done!”

 

“Do I get to see?” Jenna asked, laughing. She had the Weasley Twins and Lee Jordan with her, explaining how Wet Start Fireworks worked. She had grinned and asked which element was used, earning her a bemused look and a theater and English major’s explanation of the periodic table.

 

They had been fascinated, and one or two students who had come close looked terrified. She’d warned them strongly off the radioactive ones, at least, and wondered if she could get them a good book of warnings.

 

Sirius had settled down and shooed them off, saying he would let them interrogate her later.

 

“Of course,” Sirius said, leading her down to the gates of Hogwarts. “It used to be my Uncle Alphard’s, actually, a swinging little den of vice and iniquity like you have never seen…”

 

“I have only heard about Lily Potter through your stories, but even the impish elf queen you describe would be pissed you’re bringing her son into a bordello,” Jenna said, blinking up at him. The stories, which she had kept up when he came back to Hogwarts each night, were a way for him to comb over his memory and remember the good, to bleed to poison out and properly mourn the dead.

 

“The books and curiosities are locked away, and the parties ended a long time ago, Miss Terrier,” he defended himself. “It is perfectly safe.”

 

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Jenna said, hefting her bag.

 

He’d mentioned it was in Dover, along the coast, but Jenna couldn’t do her normal research, and had been unsure how much they were allowed to tell, between all three of their precarious safety positions.

 

As it was, it was colder than home but warmer than Hogwarts, an overcast, blustery sort of day that was instantly familiar to her and carried the hint of saltwater to her nose and tongue.

 

The cottage was a white Tudor style building with overgrowing roses heading for winter, whacked carelessly to create a path. She frowned and tried to remember the tricks to growing them in proper ways.

 

Inside, though, was nice, clean smelling and lightly furnished, and Jenna wondered absently what a teenaged Sirius had done to decorate the house.

 

“Come on, come on, you missed the best part,” he grinned, leading her upstairs. “I made you an office!”

 

“You made me an office,” Jenna grinned at the spinnable corkboard, the old desk, and what looked like… “is that an outlet?”

 

“Uncle bought the place from muggles, I  just had it rewired,” Sirius said, crossing his legs, a slight smirk on his face as he leaned against the doorframe. “Which means we now have internet.”

 

She looked at him, unabashed glee in her eyes.

 

“What, I like Criminal Minds,” Sirius shrugged. She kissed him on the cheek before just leaning in on a hug, letting him know she was there and staying around. “And you told me I had two weeks before you had to actually start working properly again.”

 

Jenna grinned and started properly setting up the wifi to type up the articles she’d hand written and drafted to send to the Susanna Riemer.

 

**_December_ **

 

She wasn’t being fair to him, she knew it. He had been going to ask for an exemption to be made for extraordinary circumstances, but Umbridge and Snape’s flare of temper had made that impossible.

 

But it was getting close to the holidays, and she couldn’t go home. She attended both family ceremonies and ducked out of the religious services, finding faith and necromancy to be too uncomfortable a mix.

 

“Next year,” Sirius muttered as they pushed through the crowds at King’s Cross, “I vote we stay with your family for holidays. Actually, maybe this summer. Fuck the Ministry, I refuse to have every well-meaning, over-interfering witch who thinks she has a say…”

 

“You like Molly, Baskerville,” Jenna reminded him gently, drawing closer. He still hated crowds, though, something tight in his chest and eyes surveying everyone. She was careful not to block his wand hand, and was right in front and slightly to the side, feeling a fist bunch around her purple winter coat every so often.

 

“Harry likes Molly,” Sirius corrected under his breath. “I’m getting tired of being asked if it is really appropriate for me to be raising my godson.”

 

“And you are afraid he’ll listen to her,” Jenna said, looking up. “Mmm, Sirius, the kid isn’t that shallow. And I think you have come miles, and Harry needs someone who will make him their number one priority right now. And that’s you.” She frowned. “Though I would like to remind you to take care of yourself.”

 

“That’s why I married you,” he said, something apologetic in his tone. “And I’m sorry you don’t feel…”

 

She drove a heel into his foot. “Sirius, my parents were more interested in finding themselves then in raising a kid. I get how important this is for Harry, and I got to know him while you were cleaning the house. He needs you to be in his corner, okay? Because god knows there seem to be no other adults blatantly and only in his corner. Molly’s sweet, but she has her own kids, and the Headmaster… I’m willing to believe he fucked up and wants to make good,” and Sirius was really lucky she wasn’t really looking at his face, because his expression was so far past skeptical it would prompt a minor explosion. “but he’s driven by whatever… shit he has to deal with.”

 

“He seems to have you in his corner, too,” Sirius said, looking for wizards. They were early, and most went straight for the platform. Only larger parties or other exceptions organized in freer spots.

 

“Yeah, well,” she scuffed the floor. “All it takes for evil to succeed to is for good people to do nothing. And I got lucky with my grandparents. Harry didn’t.”

 

They had debated picking Harry up at the Platform, all of the ways it could go wrong- well, Sirius causing a riot, someone trying to grab Harry for “his own safety”, to curses flying, and Dumbledore starting to making tentative comments on the difficulty of Sirius having custody of Harry.

 

Jenna had gone very, very still at that, and Sirius had noticed a curious ghost that had drifted too close zooming away.

 

Remus had stepped in and agreed to escort Harry to a pre-arranged spot, where they would then go to dinner and then home.

 

“So,” came a voice, and Sirius let a low growl and went closer to Jenna, getting in looming territory, “this is the mutt and his muggle toy.”

 

Jenna had the feeling that the man meant to say something else, but that might have been keen journalistic instincts talking, there.

 

Tall, blonde, and with the air of someone who had the careless air of money enough to pay his way out of dangerous consequences, she pegged him as wizard, anti-Sirius, and of the murderous sort. The woman who was watching with a wary, disapproving air had dark blonde hair and Sirius’ sharp grey eyes, one arm slightly raised as if to lay a restraining hand on her husband.

 

“Malfoy,” Sirius said, just as cordially. “Hello, Narcissa. I saw your son. He seems… healthy. Loyal to the family. The hippogriff incident is just embarrassing, though. I think you got injured worse trying to tame an army of bowtruckles when you were nine, and even your father was more likely to say it taught you a lesson.”

 

She blushed a bright red at that, and Jenna had a feeling that that incident was one Narcissa Malfoy had tried to suppress heavily.

 

Jenna was trying to figure out the best way to flee this scene.

 

“So, this is the muggle woman who managed to help you outwit the aurors,” Malfoy said, consideringly. “I heard there are quite a few people who are unhappy with that.”

 

“Well, I’m unhappy with Sirius being imprisoned for something he didn’t do, but I suppose that we can;t get everything we want,” Jenna mused, unable to help herself. “The Prophet blasted the officials involved, which is some consolation.”

 

“Mmm,” Malfoy said, before Narcissa started what was meant to be a subtle tugging at his arm.

 

“The Express will be arriving at any moment,” she said. “Let’s go and meet Draco.”

 

“That went well,” Jenna said, understanding a lot more about why Sirius had demanded they avoid the entire area around where the Malfoys lived. “He was one of the ones who got cleared by claiming the devil made him do it?”

 

“Pretty much,” Sirius agreed. “Which is strange, considering the fact that I am almost certain he collected Dark Objects for the Dark Arse.”

 

“And some of them are still floating about, from what the students said,” Jenna said, biting her lip. “I’ll have my cloud cuckoo landers keep an eye out for any up tick that might fit possessed objects, too. Balor, this dude from Belfast, said that there was a sudden dip in transients last June, and a few rumors he would give me when he got more information.”

 

“Vanished bodies, or experiments,” Sirius breathed. “Dammit. I’ll let Dumbledore know.”

  
  


**_January_ **

 

So, she was setting up Skype with a purpose. Not, actually, that her office wasn’t bad about videos. She had good light, and there wasn’t the heavy fog of ambient magic that wrecked electronics. (She’d wondered, briefly, if magic was some weird-ass sort of electromagnetic radiation, remembered she left mad science to the people who studied that in detail, and remembered that her NDA included a fucking mind wipe.)

 

“Okay, so, my grandparents basically want to meet you,” she told Harry, who looked nervous. “My parents both have one or two brothers, I have some cousins, but they have decided you still count as a grandchild they haven’t gotten to meet yet. Please don’t worry too much.”

 

“Why would I be worried?” Harry asked, before pausing. “Are they… like you?”

 

Sirius let out a barking laugh, and Jenna threw a pillow at him. “Jackass! And they have powers, but my one grandmother is the only one who has them on my scale. She’s like a living version of your cloak.”

 

“Cool,” Harry said.

 

“Mmm, she’ll be the one cursing me as a layabout and a no good granddaughter thief in Hungarian and Yiddish,” Sirius said solemnly. “She doesn’t like me much.”

 

“You forgot your shirt,” Jenna laughed. “I think Gram Andrews appreciated the view.”

 

“So they are like you then,” Harry said cheekily, and Jenna ruffled his hair.

 

“I get a pillow, and he gets praise,” Sirius pouted.

 

“He’s more adorable,” Jenna pointed out. “Time to introduce everyone.”

 

Harry was bemused by the four people who seemed to be jostling for position on the screen, grumbling at each other.

 

“Yes, I was in fact raised by wolves,” Jenna told him with a grin.

 

“Stop lying to the boy, Jenna,” the older woman said, scowling. “I raised you to be a good girl. I’m not so sure about the rest of them, though.”

 

“Hello, Harry, I’m Jenna’s Grandda Andrews,” said the man with fading reddish hair. “I trust your godfather is still treating her right?”

 

“She’s keeping him out of the kitchen and he’s making sure she actually gets into the bedroom,” Harry said without thinking. “So I think so.”

 

The fluffy haired lady with the pearls snickered into Mr. Andrew’s shoulder, and Jenna turned red. “Cute, kidlet.”

 

“I am a dead man,” Sirius muttered. “As soon as one of us cross the Atlantic, I am a dead man.”

 

“As long as our Jenna is happy, I don’t see why we should kill you,” the man with the light accent and Jenna’s green eyes said.

 

The woman next to him muttered something that made Jenna frown, briefly, and say something back in the same language.

 

Jenna’s question was waved off, and Sirius looked quietly thoughtful.

 

The conversations from there were light and Harry was amazed at the lack of difficulty in avoiding problems like the Statute of Secrecy. They were more interested in what kind of food Harry liked, his hobbies and friends, what kind of holiday celebrations they had.

 

“It was more celebrating the family all getting together,” Jenna said, a mischievous expression on her face.  “Less religious. You know me.”

 

“Religiously neutral,” Mr. Pogany said fondly. “Between Ileana, Maggie, Fred, and I, it was the only way to go. Not to mention the children...”

 

“There was still shouting,” Jenna muttered, looking sheepish. “So much shouting.”

 

The conversation ended a little later, and Sirius waited for Jenna to completely close everything before saying, “So, what exactly was your grandmother saying?”

 

“Ah,” Jenna hunched her shoulders. “Well. Apparently she was bitching about wizards. She met some during the war. Her war, not...” She waved her hands.

 

Sirius paused. “Oh. She was… resistance, right.”

 

Jenna rubbed the gold star on her chain. “Yup. Wonder if your headmaster met her. I talked to her after we settled down here, and she blew up a bit- she thinks I take too many risks. Apparently there wasn’t enough time or organization for memory wipes, especially when the woman in question could turn invisible.”

 

“They might have assumed she was a witch herself,” Harry guessed. “And didn’t think they needed to.”

 

“Maybe,” Jenna said, doubtful. “If Grams had a different opinion on wizards then she does now. And I deeply suspect there were other talented individuals who did the same and probably had the same point of view. It would explain why she was so big on me keeping quiet about my powers.”

 

Sirius let out a coughing sort of laugh.

 

“Oh, hush, Baskerville,” she laughed, “The world is changing, and I need to keep up.”

 

~

 

Sirius watched from a safe corner of Jenna’s office, in a deep window seat that overlooked the hills. His wife- which was still strange, until he woke up from a nightmare to a cup of tea and got used to her explaining the gaps being locked up for twelve years, a hand on his back and a sharp grin when challenged- was setting up for a new aspect of her job.

 

She was wearing a black and white sweater thing that fell off her shoulder and no jewelry but the simple wedding ring he’d given her in a spare moment the first week of their marriage. It set off her pale gold hair in a loose bun and whatever she did to her eyes to make them look mysterious, and she was fidgeting and setting up her camera.

 

She introduced herself and started in on her topic.

 

“As you all know, I am pretty well known for going into old places and seeing what ghosties can do,” she grinned. “So, for my introductory video, I am going to give you the ins and outs of how you do this.”

 

She clapped her hands together. “The first is, get permission from the owners. There are a lot of reasons. I like doing it because hey, getting arrested for trespassing sucks. They can also give you access to records, especially if you make it clear you want to do this for historical or research reasons. Not everything is on the internet, folks.”

 

Sirius grinned at that. Those viewers had no idea how much wasn’t on there.

 

Probably. Jenna was keeping an eye out for that sort of thing, just in case.

 

She kept going on, giving basic safety tips and then giving her wrap up.

 

“So, folks, if you have any topics you think I should cover, let me know at the email address at the bottom of the site!” she said. “Good night, and don’t let the ghoulies bite!”

 

“I love that thing,” Sirius said. “It is… I don’t even think the wizarding world has a comparison. A library and floo combined, maybe?”

 

“It’s going to be what exposes the wizarding world,” Jenna said, biting her lip.”We already know that some of the bigger cover stories of the last war were only accepted because most people don’t know about magic. When shit starts spilling out of wizards only, then…”

 

“People are going to have easier ways of showing photos and videos,” Sirius said. Jenna had, one afternoon, shown him how easy taking a cellphone video and uploading it to youtube was. They had a bet running on if the wizards would be exposed be someone being stupid or by Death Eaters coming back.

 

“This next war is going to be even worse than most people expect,” Jenna predicted, moving up and going over to Sirius and curling up against his shoulder. “And I don’t think I can give you warning, not really.”

 

He kissed the top of her head, remembering the stubborn woman who insisted on making sure that he got to Hogwarts in one piece, who talked people through weird situations they didn’t understand.

 

Both of them were people who did things. Waiting like this, or being helpless, was not something that sat well with them.

 

“We can figure out.” Sirius grinned. “How hard can it be?”

 

“I need to introduce you to the idea of genre savviness,” Jenna sighed.

 

_**February** _

 

“So, what, exactly, are we doing?” Sirius asked, layering an extra warming charm on his gloves. His hands stiffened too easily in the cold now, and he was hoping that it wouldn’t be permanent. (Jenna had sighed and wondered when she could take him home, if winter was this sharp and the summer mugginess would be such a slap.)

 

“Look, you said it yourself, this was weird,” she said, sitting on the park bench with a latte. “And I trust this woman- her data is good, and from what I can tell, she’s right on the money with what she’s been telling us. The coroner’s reports- which we are not discussing the legality of, by the way-” she shot a significant look at Sirius, who was leaning back and smirking a bit. “back up what you are telling me.”

 

“And the Ministry is refusing to investigate, saying it is entirely a muggle matter,” Sirius said. “I was just asking if you had one of your plans.”

 

“Mmm, you don’t plan, so I need to do it,” Jenna teased. “If only to make sure you don’t die of sepsis.” She made an absent gesture with her hands, either recalling the pins and graphs on her corkboard or waving away a stray bit of spirit, Sirius wasn’t sure.

 

He watched the crowds, wondering if any of them would be next. Three victims so far- they were lucky that the wound pattern was distinctive, and that Jenna’s conspiracist was related to the last victim.

 

Jenna tucked her hair behind her ears. “The woman with the leather jacket and the chunky scarf,” she hissed. “She’s the one.”

 

Sirius frowned at the woman in question, who seemed normal enough. She blended into the others walking in a quick, miserable huddle through the park. “How can you tell?”

 

“Something about the way she holds herself, really, I can’t be more specific,” Jenna admitted. “It’s like with ghosts- sometimes I catch flickers with people. Can you keep a tail on her?”

 

Sirius hissed the spell at the best angle he could, catching the ends of her scarf.

 

“Not bad,” Jenna said. “Lexie, can you follow the woman too? Get out if it seems weird, or if she goes into someplace isolated.”

 

The ghost must have protested, because Jenna shook her head, snowflakes shaking loose. “Better to be safe, okay? And we’re not even taking this woman in ourselves- someone else is.”

 

“Hopefully,” Sirius said in what he thought was the dead girl’s general direction.

 

“Again, he doesn’t like plans,” Jenna sighed and took a gulp of her latte. “Hurry.”

 

“How old is she?” Sirius asked, seeing her shoulders slump.

 

“Rough guess- she died twenty, twenty-five years ago, during the summer- the shorts were a tip-off, same with the hair,” Jenna rubbed her throat absently. “She was mostly undamaged- but when you cast the spell on the target I saw some trauma marks. I think seeing you cast the spell made her remember her death.”

 

When the first rumors and fireside meetings started, and a girl alone might prove too tempting a target for someone eager to prove the new firebrand logic. “How old, JJ?”

 

“Fifteen, I think? I try not to pinpoint too close, sometimes,” Jenna admitted. “There is a reason for those nice medications the doctors give me. And the flaily, screaming nightmares. But she seems sensible enough, and she agreed to act as a sort of ghost liaison here. That way, she can collect the dead people gossip.”

 

“And you don’t have to deal with the violent ghosts without warning,” Sirius hoped. Her “morning-after” kit was terrifyingly well-practiced to hide the scrapes and bruises she could pick up. And while they weren’t near as frequent, he’d learned that her own nightmares, caused by ghostly encounters gone horribly wrong, could terrify him as deeply as dreaming of dementors.

 

He hadn’t known she could scream like that.

 

“It’ll cut down the number of incidents if I have a number of gossipy ghosts who can gather info and pass it on,” Jenna agreed, sounding all too comfortable with the prospect of being in pain again.

 

Lexie must have come back, because Jenna focused on someone he couldn’t see, just off of what should have been an intimate conversation with him.

 

“She’s holed up in an empty apartment a few blocks away, I just want to walk by, something Lexie is saying makes me nervous,” Jenna said, kicking aside a drift of snow. “Let’s check it out?”

 

Sirius was up and moving before she could finish, only stopping when he realized that Jenna was the one who could see their guide.

 

He couldn’t, not really, but he swore he heard ghostly laughter.

 

The flat was easy enough to get to- an unlocking charm that made Jenna’s eyes tighten. “Sirius, tagging only. We’re not supposed to engage.”

 

“We don’t have time,” Sirius pointed out. “And there’s only one of them, and three of us.”

 

“There are memory shards,” Jenna said. “Whatever she is, she’s a messy eater, and leaving smears of her victims everywhere. Lex, get out, tell the other ghosts to avoid her.”

 

They crept up the stairs, Sirius with his wand out, Jenna with a gun whose legality Sirius seriously didn’t want to question. (“It is legal, there was a thing, I know people, Baskerville. Slightly scary people, occasionally. I don’t think Grams was the only one who got out of the war with her memory intact.”)

 

The door wasn’t locked, and Sirius was willing to bet that thieves were viewed as delivery for her.

  
  


The scarf was down, and the coat, and there were scratch marks thickly coating the bland woman’s throat, fading to ropy scars, and he noticed the slightly dagger-like tips of her dark red nails, the light scars near her mouth and lips make-up didn’t quite cover.

 

“Why is one of Innana’s Hounds in my home?” the ghoul-like woman said, her voice smoky enough to pass for human if you were willing to believe. “With one of the wanded ones, to boot. How fascinating…”

 

“You killed three people, it catches the eye,” Jenna shrugged, keeping enough of her focus on the target while scoping the flat for further dangers. (“I get tossed about, and an old friend gave me some intense self-defense lessons.” Sirius had smiled, let it go for long enough to finish what he was doing on his bike, and made sure she could apply that with magic. Because fuck it, his terrier empress was going to outlive him in this mess.)

 

The woman lunged, nails lengthening into short little blades and mouth sharp and wide.

 

Jenna went into a stance just as Sirius cast a curse that bisected the woman, blood spraying grey and musty over everything, just slightly more like dust then liquid.

 

“What was that?” Jenna asked, grey splattered across her face.

 

“I wasn’t getting you killed,” Sirius said, hand tight on his wand. The apartment was empty of any sort of real decoration, no pictures or furniture.

 

“My gun has the silencing charm on it,” Jenna pointed out, still careful. “But I suppose the scars on her throat argue against nonmagical weapons. No ghost, but she’s dead. You might want to… are they going to need to see the body?”

 

“Yeah, probably,” Sirius frowned. “This isn’t going to help my attempts to seem sane and reasonable to Dumbledore and everyone, is it?”

 

Jenna looked at him, then looked at the body, a faint wrinkle across her nose as she tread over the formerly decent sea-blue carpet, following a trail. “Sirius, you did save me…”

 

“Wizarding priorities,” he admitted. She flipped off the idea of wizarding priorities, heading into the bedroom. Sirius hurried after her, sending a quick look at the corpse.

 

“He’s here,” she said, looking around, “not quite dead, fuck, fuck,” she pulled her phone out and knelt, pulling aside the blankets and revealing a mauled looking man, looking quite grey under what would normally be a dark skin tone. “He has a pulse. I’m going to call 911.”

 

“How are we going to explain the dead body?” Sirius asked.

 

She scowled. “What will the Ministry do to him?”

 

“There are a few healers attached to the Order, I’ll ask Dumbledore to make sure one of them takes care of him,” he said, pulling out the mirror. “Remus?”

 

Remus looked tired, and wary. “Yes?”

 

“I have good news, bad news, and I need a healer to the following address…” he said, the old joke coming to him naturally.

 

Jenna watched carefully, then had one question. “Was this how it was before?”

 

Sirius sat down carelessly on the carpet, thinking. “A bit. Only we were juggling four or five problems on top of each other, and the Ministry had different names in the slots.” He shook his head. “That’s not quite fair but…”

 

“I know.”

 

_**March** _

 

“He’s fine,” Emmeline Vance said with a slight turn of the lips that might have been a smile. “Ian Fells has made a full recovery. Well, not full-” and here she looked at Jenna, who gave a catlike smile, “but enough to I’m not worried about him.”

 

“Brilliant,” Sirius said, watching as Jenna perched herself on the top of the couch against him, quiet and watchful. “So what are we doing with him- the poor bastard was stuck there for three days, and it took you a week to heal him. Memory charms aren’t meant to work for long term like that.”

 

Jenna’s leg flinched against his arm.

 

“We had him unconscious for most of it- he’ll think he was in a hospital, maybe, and wind up in a park bench in Kent once we talk to him- the weather’s supposed to be good, and it isn’t far from where he lived,” Emmeline said, before going to check in with the Headmaster.

 

“And ruin the poor bastard’s life,” Jenna growled. “How hard was it to leave bruises, leave marks, dammit, something to show he fought, that he didn’t go on a week and a half bender. Really, what the fuck were they thinking?”

 

“Not leaving any trace of magic, terrier,” Sirius reminded her. “Remember that pesky international law?”

 

He felt her sigh. “That law is going to fail epically. Is it too late to add a bet for disability lawsuits? I’m pretty sure I read a book about that.”

 

She stepped up on the cushion then jumped onto the floor. “Let’s interview Fells, okay?”

 

“JJ?” Sirius put a hand on her shoulder, trying not to seem like he was weighing her down. “Look at me.”

 

She spun around, head up to study him.

 

“What’s going on isn’t fair, and I agree, it is victimizing him twice. But we can’t do anything yet, except wait for too big an incident to happen,” he said, brushing some hair off her face.

 

She grinned. “Hey, I know you agree,” she teased. “It’s why I haven’t bashed you over the head with one of the tools you use to redo that motorcycle and gone pleading to Godmother.”

 

He kissed her quickly, all sunshine and energy, and offered her his arm. “One day you are going to explain why you mention your godmother that way.”

 

She contemplated that. “Maybe. But not now.”

 

Ian was watching warily, a faded black eye and a wrap on his wrist, and looked between them.  “You found me?” he asked.

 

“Yeah, we did,” Jenna said cheerfully. “Mind explaining any details you might remember? The missing persons report said you went missing after work on a Friday...”

 

“Yeah, I realized I didn’t have groceries, didn’t want to go grocery shopping, figured I’d stop somewhere,” Ian nodded. “It was dark, and foggy as shit, but there were buses and other people so I didn’t think anything of it. I went to take a corner, and this woman comes up to me asking for help. Says she forgot her mobile, needs to call her sister.” He blushed. “I went to go get my phone out of my pocket…”

 

“And then?” Jenna asked, “close your eyes and try to think of any detail- sight, sound, smell.”

 

Ian tried. “It was… she hit my head, and I was sick for a while? I was dizzy, and there was just a bit of light that kept giving me a migraine.”

 

“Just keep thinking,” Sirius said, remembering one too many false leads caused by overeager witnesses. When he had brought up the idea of brushing up on his skills as the Order’s investigator, Jenna had helped him try to find the online courses and so on that helped him organize his self-taught lessons.

 

“She fed me- I don’t know how often, just instant stuff, maybe thing of packaged fruit from Tesco’s,” he shrugged. “I felt better for a bit, then worse.”

 

Feeding the food, Sirius mused. How fascinating- hopefully Moony could track down what, exactly, their guest was, because she was not a garden variety ghoul. Something in Ian sharpened, looking at Jenna, and Sirius remembered what the woman had said about Inanna's ‘Hounds and cast an irregular silencer over them.

 

“They can’t hear us,” he said, waiting for the explosion.

 

“They’re wand wavers,” Ian said suddenly, looking at Jenna. “You aren’t. What the fuck. I mean, wizards, but what. the. fuck.”

 

“I liked his ass,” she said, pointing her thumb at Sirius, who grinned. “I also have an evil plan. Can I ask what you can do?”

 

“I see things- auras, my ex-girlfriend called it. My boss uses me for interviews- she doesn’t know why I’m so good, but my picks always work out. I’ve seen wizard-aura all over, which is terrifying,” he said, glaring at her.

 

“Hey, I didn’t know how to explain the fully transformed ghoul, and this avoids…” she waved her hand.

 

“Evil Big Bro, I know,” he nodded, and Sirius snorted. “But then you walked in, with a weird aura that’s almost like a clairaudient I know.” Jenna winced. “Yeah- he got lucky, powers run in the family, so when he started hearing voices they realized it might be ghosts. He’s on meds to balance him out, but he’s functional.”

 

“Full out… I don’t know the proper word for it,” Jenna shrugged. “I’ve heard it called Inanna’s Hound by the woman who took you, and Annwn Hound, once, when I was little. Something about the underworld, and being tied to it.” She grinned. “Ghosts are as real as you are to me, or maybe just the weird space between the living world and the underworld.”

 

“...Huh, and I thought hearing ghosts sucked,” he shook his head. “But seriously, most of us avoid them. Why’d you end up working with him?”

 

“He’s Sirius Black,” Jenna said, feeling like maybe she was massively out of the loop. Her contact with other people with powers was limited, and she hadn’t known about wizards.

 

Being fair, in Britain, with the Wizarding War, it might have been harder to avoid them.

 

“I was trying to keep tabs on the hunt for me,” Sirius said, taking up the story, noticing her getting lost in her thoughts. “She thought I looked miserable and injured, took pity and heard me out, and got me the chance to clear my name.”

 

“He pulled a Jamie in return,” Jenna shrugged. “Saved me from a vengeful auror who had tried to memory wipe me before I met Sirius and a bitchy toad of an official.”

 

“Jaime… oh, that TV show,” Ian said. “I’m going to pretend to sleep for a bit, now.”

 

“You know that isn’t all his power,” Sirius mused.

 

“Enough to fool a memory charm?” Jenna asked hopefully. His expression was playful. “Face it, I need to know more about my powers. Luck and pluck ain’t gonna be enough every time. Also, if I can get a zombie army, I want a zombie t-rex.”

 

Sirius… wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. “Why?”

 

“I’m tired of getting a crick in my neck every time I talk to you,” she said, heading back to the couch and making a gesture for a silencing charm. Last time someone had broken it, JJ and Sirius had treated them to the filthiest, more hilarious dirty talk they could think of, making them the scandal of the Order and earning them a high-five from Tonks.

 

“Inanna was a Sumerian goddess, and I know two things about her story- one is that she threatened to sic a zombie army on someone if she didn’t get her way, and there is a famous story about her descent into the underworld, possibly just so she could. Things went shitty, and her faithless boytoy ended up being sacrificed so she could go back up to earth,” Jenna rattled off.

 

“But the t-rex…” Sirius frowned.

 

“It’s basically a zombie tank, I have given this thought,” Jenna waved him off. Which meant it was from another book.

 

“And the Annwn Hound?” Sirius asked.

 

“Mentioned once, when I was… nine, maybe? We lived in… you wouldn’t know it, but we had a famous hospital, where horrible things had happened,” Jenna sighed, running her hands through her hair. “I was a child, you see, and it was only a good summer bike away. And I was already a bit odd, even if I didn’t look it- I didn’t always speak English, far out enough from the city for that not to be normal, I lived with both sets of grandparents instead of my parents, who visited every so often and seemed more like embarrassing relatives. And they had just visited, and my mother had embarrassed me- I don’t even remember how, now, isn’t that funny?” It seemed very bleak, actually, and Sirius forced himself not to study the worn blue silk of the couch.

 

“So when some of the other kids invited me on an adventure, I said yes,” and a childhood with Bellatrix and the younger future pureblood crowd told Sirius that no, she shouldn’t have done that, but he knew that strong, angry desire to blaze a path. And how very terrible loneliness was. “I wanted to stop when I realized where we were going, but I didn’t want to look like a baby, so I let them talk me into going inside one of the buildings.” Her eyes were very bright. “They didn’t see the other children, and I think I frightened them- the living children. They shoved me in a room and didn’t realize they had jammed the door. Aunt Leah, the one who can find people, she found me a few hours later. There was a family fight, only no one knew where my parents were to contact them. Grams said a lot of angry things about devil magic, and Granddad Andrews said something about Annwn Hounds.”

 

Sirius placed a kiss on her forehead. “Oh, JJ…”

 

“I learned to throw a mean punch that summer,” she added, slightly watery. He decided to change the topic. “My godmother insisted. I managed to put it out of my head, for the most part, until I got to college and that damn theater turned out to be haunted and stirred up all those memories.”

 

“What did you mean by “pulling a Jamie”?” Sirius asked her, amused by the faint blush on her cheeks. “That’s not from the books you gave me, right?”

 

“It’s something from another book series. Well, a show, too, which is probably how I’ll explain it, since you are still working your way through A Song of Ice and Fire,” she said. “What are you up to now?”

 

“A Storm of Swords,” he said, scratching his hair. “I like Oberyn. Very interesting fellow, and I can’t say I fault his reasoning.”

 

Jenna bit her lip, because spoilers. “We’ll start Outlander later.”

 

**_April_ **

 

April is the cruellest month, wasn’t that how that poet put it?

 

Sirius and his wizard friends were discussing some great big sporting event Jenna would be much more interested in if it was hockey or soccer or gymnastics, or any of the sports she actually had done at school.

 

He was sitting at her side while she was writing- fiction, this time, because as much fun as throwing together Cracked articles was, she liked having the breathing room financially to sit down and just write fiction.

 

He was also occasionally stealing her notebook and doodling, or making notes, and she pinched her nose and reminded herself that she did actually love this man.

 

Besides, she was… not quite at odds and ends- Sirius wasn’t stupid enough to try locking her away, after all. But having screaming nightmares of blood and death at least twice a week wasn’t helping, and she was rather tired of being considered stupid, useless, and only kept around as a possibly good lay.

 

(She was a fucking fantastic lay, and she could get references.)

 

She finally gave up and left her notebook in Sirius’ hands. “I’ll be back, alright?”

 

“Right,” he said, then getting back into a discussion of discrete monitoring and seeing if there could be a way to track who was bringing who.

 

“I know you said he’s useless, but surely Crouch and their assistants have some sort of handle on the situation?” she heard Hestia offer. Hestia had been a first time Order member, and one of the ones to welcome Sirius back more warmly.

 

“Bertha Jorkins is missing- oh, it isn’t official, poor woman has no family, and Ludo is insisting that she’s just wandering,” a witch Remus had recruited said thoughtfully. Nadia Forrester was a muggleborn whose younger brother was a werewolf, bitten just out of school. Her wages and some of the freelance work they could send Tomas’ way kept them afloat for now.

 

(Ian had remembered through the Memory Charm, and he knew a bartender who might be willing to work around a full moon schedule. She’d let Nadia know when it was official.)

 

“Bagman just doesn’t want anyone poking through his department records,” Vance snorted. “He’s a fence walking pissant who doesn’t care who gets hurt as long as he lines his pockets.”

 

Nice to know how wonderful the magical world was, Jenna thought wryly as she went up the steps to her office.

 

Her email had a few messages from home- a picture of a rare butterfly from Dad, a long email typed over a few sittings from Grandma Andrews, Isobel filling her in on the gossip back in the city. Dean was regretting sending her over, however popular her work was getting. It was enough to make a girl feel homesick, especially when she was staring out at the chilly rain and listening to the faint talk of doom and gloom downstairs.

 

She wanted to be home, with the wild weather and hiking in Fairmount, avoiding Eastern State and taking the odd half-day to type a report in the massive central library, dancing with Isobel and her daughter, her shitty apartment that she grew peppermint and lemon balm in. She regretted learning that wizards were a thing that existed, that people existed who thought nothing of rearranging your head to suit their needs, who looked down on the majority of the world for not having magic the way they thought was proper.

 

Oh, yes, and not having to look over her shoulder twice- once for being female, and once for this whole mess.

 

A year and a day, was the terms of the marriage when Sirius suggested it, just long enough to keep her safe, but Jenna had known, for a long while now, that she couldn’t get away that easy. She’d gone to fairy land and eaten the fruit, after all, like in the tales, and if you knew how to listen, you knew that it was nearly impossible to get a clear happy ever after in that tale.

 

She didn’t blame Sirius, oddly enough- she was in a numb sort of “Female Country Star and Jagged Little Pill” rage, but she was coiled protectively around him and his poor godson, both of whom had suffered so much, and raging at everyone else.

 

Dammit, she wanted that zombie T-rex.

 

And there was an Emma email. She started humming an off-Broadway tune, not caring if no one could really tell what it was. It was Emma’s persona in a nutshell.  Heaven and hell is a hell of a gamble to lose...

 

Emma would be in London for business in a week, and it would be lovely if they could meet.

 

Jenna could do that- well, it might be tricky, she knew the terms of the de presenti marriage they had confronted the Minister with were odd, but she could probably, at worst, have Sirius pick her up at a certain time. Or Tonks, or Nadia, or Tomas…

 

Ah. Jenna tilted her head. There was the minor matter of Emma being a telepath.

 

...She could tell Sirius this afterwards?

 

~

 

Jenna had worn her good dress for this, bringing a thick book and leaving a promise to Sirius that she would let him know if Emma wanted to stay out late. Emma had arranged a car to the restaurant that they were eating lunch at, and Jenna sighed, knowing her dress was three years out of date, even if it was a miracle find in a dim thrift shop.

 

“Jenna,” Emma said, and there was a hint of amusement in her look. “I was very offended not to get an invitation to your wedding.”

 

“Would you have attended?” Jenna asked, rolling her eyes.

 

“Of course not, it would have been boring, I respect you and your spy network too much to seduce your husband on your wedding night,” Emma said, and there was a teasing glint in her eyes.

 

“He does like them bossy,” Jenna said. “Perhaps we should suggest a... partnership,” she added, laughing as they were lead to their table. Emma always did bring out the worst in her.

 

Sirius would find it hilarious, though.

 

“He does seem handsome, in a brooding sort of way,” Emma said, ignoring her mild look of disapproval. Emma in cities must have the same background level of noise she did, and Jenna had her own coping mechanisms. Surface diving was unavoidable. “And eager to please.”

 

“A wild card,” Jenna warned, because Emma did like playing with fire. They were seated in a private room, and Jenna wondered absently if it was bugged. Emma placed their order, which earned her a glare. Emma gave her a cheeky grin.

 

“My taste is better, anyway.”

 

Of course not, darling, I am careful, Emma reprimanded her. Are we clear on the… unearthly front? Jenna focused on her memory of the crew team, the poker game, and Jenna accidentally solidifying a ghost because Emma almost got herself caught. (They never had figured out how she did that, except that Jenna had been nastily exhausted for three days afterwards.)

 

“That was ages ago,” Emma waved it off. “I am far more interested in the mess you managed to land yourself in.”

 

“How much do you know?” Jenna said, pinching her nose.

 

“That you married a wizard who was until a few months ago considered very evil, managed to make their head politician dance to your tune- not, as I understand, a very difficult task, but quite good for a first effort,” Emma frowned. “And there is a war brewing.”

 

“Why does everyone know more than me?” Jenna asked, grateful for the wine coming in.

 

“I make it my business to know secrets,” Emma shrugged, her white blazer sliding to reveal more cleavage. She had alway been fascinated by the line between provocative and brazen, had been since probably before they met, first year of college. “And wizards are a useful secret to know. So very many grow disaffected, and I think that statue of secrecy will fall soon. So that means two things must be put into place.”

 

“A plan for you to get very rich off of that reveal,” Jenna teased, before turning serious, “and a way to protect those who can’t protect themselves. Because if it comes out during the war… it’ll be nasty. And people who aren’t wizards, people like us, there might not be a distinction made.”

 

Emma looked solemn, and Jenna wondered, not for the first time, if reading minds was as terribly lonely a childhood as not always being able to distinguish between the living and the dead.

 

“I have the beginnings of an R&D department made, and I have reason to believe that a few governments might be quietly funnelling some research in isolated areas. None of them can quite do it it the way I can, however,” Emma said, smile sharp. “They can’t afford to be seen going against their magical counterparts in that way.”

 

Jenna thought about it. “Emma- as a friend, and as someone who has worried about you for a while? I’ll send you updates- I’ll let my husband know some of it- I trust Sirius, and you don’t know his rage. He hides it pretty well, but he spent twelve years in hell because of the Ministry, and he doesn’t trust anyone… who isn’t me or his godson, not entirely. We have a circle who are elevated, but he admits that some of it was his own isolation during the war, and…” She thought about the isolation between Remus and Sirius, now. Sirius had told her about how he had told Snape to go under the Willow, and the whole tangle was such a mess she let it go and thought about it in fragments.

 

Emma tilted her head, but said nothing.

 

“There is going to be the wizard equivalent of the World Cup in August, and we’re worried- Bagman, the man in charge, has a racketeering past and ties to the old terrorist group,” she said, cutting off when Emma raised an eyebrow in warning.

 

The waiter came in with the food.

 

She waited until Emma waved her on. “The security has massive holes, and one of his employees is missing, with he’s insisting that no investigation happens,” she said, pinching her nose. “Not to mention the Triwizard Tournament at the school.”

 

“I think,” Emma said, “we might need a second bottle of wine.”

 

She called Sirius to let him know she’d just stay in Emma’s hotel room that night.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**_May_ **

 

Sirius tended to pace like a caged animal when he was waiting for the hammer to fall, Jenna noticed, which was possibly a tell he had picked up in Azkaban. The sharp, harsh movements he was demonstrating right now were a contrast to his normal careless elegance, when dealing with people or situations he was putting on a show for, or his absent exuberance.

 

Jenna, on the other hand, had grown up perfecting her armor, and with a love of theater. She had also had Emma Frost for a friend. Her preparations for this visit were… somewhat different.

She pinned her hair up in a pale gold pile, pulled a series of brushes out and carefully usefully used her series of makeup to highlight and alter her face in subtle ways, making her seem sharper, more In Charge.

 

The lavender button up was new, and she wore her wedding ring on its proper place, rather than tangled in the line of charms on a chain on her neck. It seemed strange to Sirius, who had known, somehow, that those charms were important to her, talismans.

 

She was rubbing the ring self-consciously. “Right. They’ll arrive at ten-thirty, inspect the premises- you, Tonks, and Remus went over the library and moved anything… questionable to the Crypt, right?” They were using the house on Grimmauld Place to store things too unsafe for public consumption, for right now.

 

He shook his head, kissing the top of her head. “Yes, you saw us do it. And we all swept for Order paperwork, not that we kept any here anyway. The worst is perhaps a letter from your Emma arriving.”

 

“Or Emma herself arriving,” Jenna said with a speculative sort of horror. “I wonder if that would show under mental magics… ah, well. Harry spent Christmas with us, and it went alright, so I wonder at them complaining now. Probably because they are finally thinking of turning over official custody to you, thank fuck. So we’ll sweep the kitchen, I’ll have to keep my polite face on while explaining a toaster, we go upstairs, they see the bedrooms…”

 

“They see no trace of torture chambers or rotting corpses,” Sirius added with something Jenna wasn’t quite sure was bleak or wicked humor, “We blandly state that you do some freelance historical research and translations now, and that you gave up your full-time position at the newspaper when you married me.”

 

“Technical truths to disguise a fact that could get us in massive hot water,” she said, grinning. “I like it.”

 

Sirius was the one who raced to the door when the couple from the Ministry arrived, Jenna walking at a quick but slightly more reasonable pace.

 

Neither of the two were Sirius’ friends, but she supposed most of Dumbledore’s supporters from the first war were well known enough. (Or dead.) Elizabeth Smith seemed to be of the moderate sort, at least, a young girl who was freshly out of school with dirty blonde hair worn in a rapunzel braid and something she thought was a recording quill. She was also looking at them both nervously, not quite hiding behind her partner.

 

Gregory Burke, however, made Sirius’s face flicker with a series of complicated expressions and Jenna was wondering if they had just stepped on a landmine here. “Black,” he said, civilly enough. “I have authorization to inspect in regards to your custody of one Harry James Potter, your marriage to Jenna Judith Andrews, and your ability to function outside of Azkaban prison.”

 

Jenna’s eyebrows winged up at that, but she shrugged. “He has been doing fine, and we handled Christmas well enough- Molly Weasley has near adopted Harry herself, so she spent most of her time here or while we were here telling us about what he liked. I don’t have a high opinion of his previous guardians, but the kids might have colored that.”

 

Nope. That was a few unguarded comments and her asking a friend who was actually a complete fucking bastard to wreck Vernon Dursley’s credit score, ostensibly because of some stupid things his son was doing online.

 

(Also, explaining credit scores to Sirius and Molly, who had merely smiled a little and looked satisfied, explaining she could never prove anything, and if Arthur had put in a complaint no one would believe further ones. All they could do was try to see what they could do to help him.)

 

Ms. Smith seemed to accept that with an unguarded expression that made her wonder if she had met the Dursleys, and they studied the living room, which was painted in blues and greens, with the couch and chairs and a low coffee table Tomas Forrester kept complaining gave him a backache. Sirius had absently started levitating it during meetings, which made the young man roll his eyes.

 

Then they went to the kitchen, which was where Sirius had been really firm about getting muggle stuff put in. Elizabeth Smith had asked tentative questions, and Sirius had grinned.

 

“JJ is the better cook, some days. I like it better, but she actually knows what tastes good. We’re finding a balance,” he said, grinning over Elizabeth’s head at her. “We worked out how to make this amazing pasta sauce with clams, what was it…?”

 

Burke huffed. “And how was this done? From the records, this was an entirely wizarding domicile before your… wife moved in.” His hesitance before the word wife spoke entire speeches. Hate speeches.

 

Jenna held back her sigh.

 

“I went with a wizarding contractor who specializes in melding muggleborn and wizarding designs, Lewis & Foster,” he said, and she knew that glint in his eye. “Lovely couple, I have the paperwork in the cabinet above the coldbin…” Somehow, he had picked up the ability to cause irritation while being polite. She blamed Remus.

 

(Remus, of course, had pointed out that she had more influence in that direction in a year than he had in ten, and they agreed it was both of them. Sirius had grinned throughout the debate and announced he loved them both equally.)

 

Burke scowled at that, and demanded to see the papers.

 

Her office was the only other real source of trouble, mostly because Jenna was stiff and nervous that Burke was going to meddle with her things. She had annoyed an Auror when she first met Sirius, mostly because she had stumbled on exactly the wrong line of questioning. Dawlish had seemed to think he had scared her off… right until Jenna and Sirius had tumbled their way into Dumbledore’s office, Pettigrew in hand.

 

“I’m doing some research work now,” she shrugged. “A bit of translation, some public records, background checks. A permanent overseas posting would have been too much for my boss to justify.”

 

“Nothing to risk the terms of your agreement with the Ministry, right?” Burke asked, and Jenna widened her eyes innocently.

 

“I like playing by the rules,” she said, mentally adding, when it suits me. Judging by Sirius’ expression, he was thinking along the same lines.

 

“As to your marriage…” he frowned and looked between them.

 

“I threw a shoe at him yesterday,” she said dryly. “Idiot decided to play a prank, I was holding them…” Elizabeth giggled at that. “But it’s a normal marriage, for all that.”

 

“She’s steady,” Sirius said, waving a hand. “Which sounds ridiculous, I know, but…” He gave her a twisty grin. “You throw almost anything at her and she can take it. The good, the bad, the snooping into our romantic life…”

 

She shook her head. “And you are an unstoppable force. You just need to know how to direct it.”

 

Burke looked between them eagerly, but they refused to give him an inch from there.

 

He wants an excuse, Jenna thought, cold and clearly. One misstep, one wrong phrase, and all of our work… it had mostly been seeing what, exactly, was going on, something that had taken on a new urgency after Christmas when Harry had been outside of Hogwarts and they had coaxed from him and the Weasleys more details of what had happened the previous two years. Sirius had been ragingly, fucking furious at Dumbledore and his apparent ability to be willfully blind at the worst possible moments, which had lead to meeting up with Nadia and others who weren’t quite up to Dumbledore’s standards. Not to mention the actual psuedo-Order favors from and for folks like Moody, like the odd ghoul woman.

 

“Ghostlight” and her abilities, even, would… Sirius didn’t know terribly much about what the Unspeakables did, but he knew enough that his too-expressive face went flat and dead at the thought of them deciding she would make a good research subject.

 

“Do you need to see our bedroom?” Jenna asked perkily. “I stored away the fuzzy handcuffs and glitter lube- that was a failed experiment.”

 

Sirius pulled a face. “Must you remind me of that, Empress?”

 

Burke scowled. “Are there plans for children?”

 

“Not currently,” Sirius said smoothly, having persuaded Jenna to leave this to him. “We wanted to wait at least a year, perhaps two, before we returned to the question. My health is mostly returned, of course,” and Jenna dug her nails in, both at the memory of the emaciated, haunted man who looked like something that would cause an international scandal, if she played her cards right- and the simple fact that Sirius tended to fall back on his childhood training when he was holding onto his temper by his fingernails.

 

“And how would your relatives feel about this?” he asked.

 

“The ones that I’m willing to speak to?” Sirius scratched his head. “Well, Andy and her family would probably be entertained- if you’ve met her, you know she’d probably make dry jokes about mental ages and all that, and I suppose the Weasleys are distant cousins, aren’t they? I’d need to check the records.”

 

“And the Malfoys?” Burke said.

 

“I said the ones I’m willing to speak to,” Sirius said, grey eyes wide and arms crossed over his chest. Jenna and Elizabeth shared a speaking glance at that. “Lucius Malfoy is at best a weak-willed son of a bitch who spoils his son to the point to ruining him, at worst a Death Eater who bribed his way out of Azkaban and was set to benefit the most from me rotting- and hopefully dying- in Azkaban.”

 

Do we remember that bit about not pissing off the inspectors? Jenna thought wryly. Tweaking their noses, yes, because anything else would be suspicious, given that it’s us. You insulting the Minister’s main source of income? Bad plan.

 

Burke, however, seemed very, very quiet at that. Jenna spent the rest of the tour looking nervously at him as he toured their bedroom and Harry’s room, asking questions about guests and Elizabeth asking what they did on a day to day basis, what custody papers still needed to be filled out, and so on.

 

The pair Apparated out, leaving the cottage feeling ransacked though nothing was out of place, and Sirius shook his head.

 

“Sorry, Jenna,” he said quietly, leaning against the wall and staring at the hardwood. “I just…”

 

“Hey,” Jenna tilted his face upwards. “Right here. You lost your temper because the whole thing was poking a sore spot. A very nasty one, with someone who genuinely wanted to send you back to that place. And right now?” She gave a slight flourish of one hand, and Sirius nodded, and he got to searching the cottage for listening charms. Most would fail- there was already a layer of protective charms against them, but it was always good to be careful.

 

Sirius found five, one in their bedroom, one in her office, one in Harry’s room, and two in the living room, enchanted onto little worn pebbles.

 

He silently walked out the door, Jenna following as a pale shadow, and over the downs, tossing them out to the sea.

 

They were halfway home before either found their voice.

 

“Think this is the end of it?” she asked. “Or should we be expecting more?”

 

“More,” he sighed. “A lot more.”

 

**_June_ **

 

Jenna still hated King’s Cross, so she had chosen to meet Emma for dinner and let Sirius and Harry have some alone time before going to Dover.

 

Of course, this also meant dragging Sirius to the British Museum, first, because she was a geek and she wanted to see the Rosetta Stone and a certain fugitive had kept her from doing that last time.

 

“Did I ever apologize for that?” he said, scratching his chin. He’d taken to letting some dark stubble grow on his chin, obscuring his face just enough that the general air of good health and lack of rage had made it difficult to pin down who he was.

 

“No, no you did not,” Jenna said, looking up at him with a grin. She was still a bit nervous about letting him wait at King’s Cross by himself- he was leaning into her more than usual, breathing the traces of mint shampoo she used like a smelling salt. “Sean, Adam, and Maggie are accompanying you, by the way.”

 

He raised an eyebrow. “Remus is taking Express home with Harry,” he said. “I don’t need your friends to keep an eye on me.”

 

“Just in case someone tries something beforehand,” she shrugged. She had been experimenting with a few curious ghosts- golden-haired Adam and probably Elizabethan Maggie were most willing to help figure out what the range of her powers were. With some preparation- she was not going to be more than two or three miles, the ghosts knew and spoke to her recently, they were self-aware- they could bring themselves to her in a manner that seemed a lot like Apparition. “Besides, I want to test it.”

 

He sighed. “All right, then. Will you wear a ‘key?”

 

She wrinkled her nose. “So many ways that can go wrong,” she muttered, but they were almost at the museum, and she focused on that instead.

 

~

 

“So, you actually found people who trust you?” Jenna teased over sinfully good pasta puttanesca. “People who aren’t me?”

 

Emma gave her a long-suffering look.

 

...Or that you didn’t put the mind whammy on, Jenna thought loudly. Emma’s look grew in intensity.

 

“There are groups who are learning to investigate- as you suspected, the wizards don’t always clean up as well as they think they do, and your grandmother was hardly the only one to have gotten away unscathed,” Emma said. “Very amateurish, but that’s government for you.”

 

They need private puppetmasters? Jenna wanted to talk while having her mouth full, and Emma had seen her without coffee or hairbrushes. She had seen Emma without make-up. It was fair.

 

“Something like that,” Emma agreed. “Or advisors- it is traditional, after all.”

 

“I don’t quite think it works like that,” Jenna managed to speak aloud. There was a familiar tugging feeling, and she waited for the ghost to appear.

 

Emma must have caught the expression on her face- one of her coworkers had caught her once, listening to the ghosts living in Old City, and snapped a portrait that looked both perfectly her and perfectly transformed, like nothing she’d ever seen before. It wasn’t quite like Emma using her telepathy- that ranged from just her normal resting bitchface to looking like she had a migraine.

 

Adam came in, looking… not angry, or worried, but like he was measuring the way the words would hit her. “Apparently Lupin wasn’t on the train with Sirius’ godson,” he started.

 

“Did Harry say why?” Jenna asked, tucking her hair behind her ear. That wasn’t like Remus, from what Sirius had said and her own meetings with the man.

 

“Apparently one of the students let a condition of his be known to the student body, and it somehow caused an upset, or Lupin wanted to prevent an upset, so he resigned and left without looking back,” Adam said, looking frustrated.

 

Jenna looked at Emma. “It’s safe, darling.”

 

“A student decided to tell people that Remus has lycanthropy, and Remus resigned and ran away,” Jenna said, slumping. “I don’t know if I blame him, from what Tomas and Remus have said about how people react to werewolves. It might have been smarter to brazen it out- there is going to be one hell of a backlash, and if Dumbledore could rally behind Remus then it might temper it.”

 

Emma raised her eyebrows.

 

“Hey, I listen when you talk!” Jenna laughed. “Besides, the Circle’s been trying to prevent a catastrophe for ages.”

 

“And Lupin provided the match,” Emma sighed.

 

“A match, and I don’t think it was entirely Remus,” Jenna protested. “Someone told the student that Remus was a werewolf…” She remembered what the kids had told her, about Snape stepping in, and the essay he had assigned.

 

That would have been terribly petty, with horribly far reaching consequences. But he had loathed Remus, and thought him capable of murder once. And he had proven petty and tried to expose Remus through those essays, and she had never heard if Dumbledore had stepped in about that, or expected Remus to put up with it because Snape was useful.

 

She understood that Sirius had, once upon a time, fucked up on an epic scale. She was starting to wonder if it was the means and not the murder that was the fuck up.

 

(She’d been friends with Emma too long.)

 

“I don’t know what to do,” Jenna said quietly. “There’s going to be fallout, and I don’t know how to help.”

 

“They don’t want them?” Emma said, twirling her hair, a brighter, more golden blonde than Jenna’s own locks. “That’s… well, violating quite a few labor laws. I wonder how the muggle laws impact wizarding ones. But I think some of my friends and I can take them on. They have a set schedule, after all, and a good, steady job with benefits would provide a stronger sense of loyalty than some scraps of dubious meat and drums of war.”

 

...This is possibly the wrong time to make a joke about the devil wearing Prada, Jenna thought wryly.

 

~

 

Emma’s plan, terrifyingly enough, worked.

 

There was a law in the works, debated hotly in the wake of the scandal of a werewolf teaching at the hallowed halls of Hogwarts- and Sirius had wondered absently at that, bringing up a few old scandals he could think of. Each new variation seemed stricter and stricter, and Tomas and Nadia looked stiffer and stiffer, until Jenna finally cracked.

 

“Oh, hush, you two, you know that it doesn’t affect the muggle world, and god knows wand waving wizards don’t have the monopoly on strangeness,” she snapped.

 

They stared at her for a long moment.

 

“She’s telling the truth,” Sirius said. “She gets tossed around by ghosts that even wizards can’t see. It would be hilarious if I didn’t occasionally get terrified. And her friend is worse- she owns some big muggle businesses and read minds, wears nothing but white.”

 

“I like Emma,” Jenna sulked.

 

“I like her too, but I wouldn’t trade her for you if you offered me the world,” Sirius said absently. She was pretty sure you could fry an egg on her face at that moment, just because he wasn’t even thinking about it, it just was.

 

It was pretty rare, actually. Jenna was attractive, yeah, but she didn’t spend Emma’s time and money in looking like a war-sex goddess come to life. There were also considerably more bruises.

 

“Anyway, there are a few powered muggles who have their ears open, or their minds open, enough that they would be willing to take on werewolf employees,” Jenna shrugged. “Qualifications might be an issue, but if we start now, build slow…”

 

Tomas’s grin was slow and brilliant. “They can’t touch it.”

 

She wasn’t as sure, but it was hope, and they all needed it.

 

_**July** _

__

Molly Weasley wasn’t a bad soul, as Gram Andrews would say. Her husband wasn’t either.

 

But for a man who was supposed to specialize in the misuse of non-magical artifacts, he had the strangest notions of how non-wizard society and its inventions functioned.

 

(Also, she had the rubber ducky song stuck in her head an entire afternoon after they were invited over to the Weasley’s the first time, and that was probably enough for her to get cranky about.)

 

And there was the slight pressure of conformity, which… well, Jenna’s parents were nonconformists in the boldest sense. Jenna had tossed conformity out the window in a slightly more cautious manner, possibly because her two big memories of ghosts- the hazy, slightly disconnected memories of the dead children of the hospital and the next time, when she was a stage manager at college and accidentally summoned up a pissy ghost- had left her wary.

 

Plus, there was the bit where the Weasley’s missed their son’s pet not dying for twelve years, and it turning out to be the person who sent Sirius to Azkaban. Also, Molly deciding Harry was a stray kitten they couldn’t possibly take care of.

 

“It must be odd,” Molly said, trying to be comforting. It was Harry’s birthday, and Jenna had accidentally stumbled upon the idea of a beach day for his birthday, just hanging out along the surf and house. Apparently, beach days were cool here too. He’d invited the four younger Weasleys, Hermione Granger, and the other boys from his dorm after a bit of thought and Sirius’ careless comment. “Spending the first year of your marriage with a young boy in the house.”

 

“Well, Harry’s been at school for a lot of it,” Jenna pointed out, not unreasonably. “And Sirius and Harry have twelve years of catching up to do. I don’t think he’s had a lot of parental figures in his life.”

 

The twins and Ron had apparently judged her and found her capable enough to handle the story of rescuing Harry last summer, and the iron bars on his window. Jenna had counted to ten in her head and reminded herself that revenge was already a thing.

 

Molly looked doubtful. She’d been putting in her own input, which was helpful in the beginning, but starting to drive Sirius nuts. Jenna was finding it a hilarious new version of the advice all new parents got, and pointed out that most people didn’t think the tattooed blonde was the responsible one.

 

(“Does she even know about your tattoos?” Sirius asked, tilting his head. “I barely saw the one, and I lived in a van with you.” Jenna had to admit the chaos tattoo on her shoulder was hard to notice, but the new poetry quote on her ankle was easy enough in summer.)

 

“Your privacy, though, if he…” she drifted off.

 

Oh. Well. Jenna blinked. Um. “Locks exist. So do silencing charms.” Of course, an actual sex life…

 

She loved Sirius. It had been slow to realize that- she’d been upset when she thought he was leaving in Scotland, and she missed him those two weeks that he’d been gone more often than he’d been with her, in Hogwarts. He was what kept her sane the past months, and she was doing something extraordinary because he’d needed her help.

 

And he was clever, and arrogant, and unexpectedly kind in over the top ways, and probably crazy as hell.

 

But from what she’d gathered, sex hadn’t been his thing before Azkaban, and he was more touch starved than anything. It wasn’t one of their priorities.

 

(She woke up that morning with the sun coming in the windows, warm and drowsy and with the now familiar weight of Sirius tangled around her, nose buried in her hair and tickling her ear. One arm was under her waist, stretching down along her stomach to her thighs, and the other wrapped around her ribs, a leg slung over hers and a slight snuffling snore in her ear.

 

She smiled and wiggled just a bit to get more comfortable, waiting for him to wake up and realize his arm was numb. Silly Sirius, she thought fondly. No matter how they fell asleep, she always woke up as his teddy bear.)

 

“Well, he’s welcome to stay for a while, if you want,” Molly said. “We’re used to having him over in the summer, and he is a good boy.”

 

“He’s a good kid,” Jenna said, very, very glad Sirius wasn’t here. He’d start mocking Molly, though it would be veiled at first, and really, between Sirius and Emma she clearly had a person-type. “But Sirius wants to spend as much time as possible with him, and Harry’s been pretty vocal about wanting to get to know Sirius.”

 

“Mmm,” Molly said, doubting the judgement of freshly minted fourteen year olds and Azkaban escapees both. “Let me know if it gets to be a bit much,” was all she finished with, and Jenna tried to find a tactful way to go find Mrs. Granger, who had apparently been feeling very distant from her daughter.

  
  
  


_**August** _

 

The boys were enthusiastic, at least, Jenna thought wryly. And Sirius loved doing things that made Harry happy, which was always a good thing.

 

But she was currently surrounded by wizards who had itchy wand hands, and she was rolling her shoulders every so often to get rid of the feeling of being watched. She never liked going to regular sporting events, and adding magic into the mix made her feel even more uncomfortable.

 

“Hey, Jenna,” Nadia said, coming up to her with a green shirt on but no other sign of sports madness. “Where’s your adoring husband?”

 

“Currently trying to stay out of jail,” Jenna said, watching as the pinstriped wizard got up from the Weasley camp, noticing the uncomfortable tones.

 

“Ah, Crouch, got it,” Nadia said, pushing one of her narrow braids back over her shoulder. “Where is Sirius?”

 

“Sirius is sulking in his tent,” Jenna said, very nicely not making an Achilles joke. She had already made a note to start reading aloud from the Medeus translation when they got home, since her only book in the tent was a Pratchett novel. “I’ll be happy when the game starts, then nervous when it ends.”

 

Somehow- well, somehow, in this case, means a Ministry employee deciding that grovelling was that week’s good idea- there had been three tickets to the Quidditch World Cup, straight for the Top Box with the VIPs. Probably, she thought cynically, to showcase the politicos with Harry and Sirius in a relaxed and friendly setting.

 

They clearly didn’t know Sirius’ ability to showcase his disdain and grudge-holding.

 

“Tomas still at his old job, or did he take up the new offer?” Jenna asked, leading Nadia into the tent. It was pretty simple- two rooms, minimal furniture, and every protection spell they could think of.

 

“He’s sticking with the old one, though he sent a few people to your scary friend,” Nadia said, looking around. “I expected Sirius to go a bit more over the top. Have you seen the guy with the peacocks?”

 

“He said something about it being easier to fuck with the more basic models,” Jenna said, grinning. “Right?”

 

“Yeah, more give and less tricky bits to come into conflict,” Sirius said, opening his eyes. “That bastard gone?”

 

“Leaving,” Jenna sing-songed. “So you can go back to enjoying yourself.”

 

“He’s apparently going to be in the Top Box,” Sirius muttered. “Arthur warned me when I left.”

 

Jenna winced. “Other side, hopefully, and I’ll protect you if need be. He doesn’t expect me to have manners.”

 

Sirius looked at her in mock-offense. “Clearly you are the well-mannered one here. Just because you can’t use a wand doesn’t give him the right to have looked down on you like that.”

 

“I think Crouch looks down on everyone?” Harry offered, peeking in the tent.

 

Sirius gave it some thought. “That… is possibly true. It explains a lot, at least.”

 

Nadia rolled her eyes. “Just stop complaining by the time the game starts, alright?”

 

Jenna raised an eyebrow.

 

The Top Box was a study in all of the ways that social interactions could be hell.

 

House elves were strange, strange creatures, and she decided that they were even stranger in the… okay, ownership- of private individuals.

 

...Then Fudge arrived, and you could see the mutual flinching. “This is going to be good,” Jenna muttered to Hermione, who was standing and fuming slightly to her left.

 

“Well, Lucius, Narcissa, you know Sirius, of course. Have you met his wife yet?” The slightly awkward, pained look was vastly similar to the one that Emma tended to cause. Jenna mimicked her friend’s murder-smile the best she could.

 

“We had a chance to meet,” Lucius Malfoy said, and Sirius let out a slight growl at the contempt in his tone. Arthur was looking about as displeased, but from what she’d heard, he had a lot of reason to be.

 

She wondered if she could find any adventurous ghosts to send into his tent…

 

Fudge was also apparently incapable of asking anyone to check the pronunciation of the Bulgarian Minister’s last name. She winced faintly at that, but none of her languages were Bulgarian, more’s the pity.

 

(She also wondered where the Irish Minister was. She’d need to ask Sirius or Arthur, who was an enormous gossip, about it later.)

 

The veela were… interesting, she decided later, keeping track of who reacted and how strongly. Did they react on a chromosomal level, by sexual attraction, or what? Pheromones enhanced by magic?

 

Sirius was looking ragged, though, as though the magic was torturing him. She gave a quick glance at Harry, but Hermione had a better chance of grabbing him, and Sirius needed to stay calm.

 

She could play the shrew for this, she thought. She pinched his ear and leaned over, letting her hair cover his face. “Breathe,” she said, too softly for anyone else to hear. “I’m here, I’m not leaving, Harry is being watched by a cold-blooded bookworm, and just focus on your breathing.”

 

“Well,” said a familiar voice, slightly amused. “That’s one way to counter a Veela’s effects.”

 

Well, Jenna mused, it did look like a kiss. “Hello, Director Bones. It’s lovely to meet you again, in friendlier circumstances.”

 

“My niece wanted to come, so I indulged her this once,” Amelia Bones said, a vaguely familiar girl at her side.

 

“Hello, Susan,” a very redfaced Harry was saying. He’d tried to jump, hadn’t he?

 

“Please tell me that some of your fancy spellwork was on making sure no one could jump from the boxes,” Jenna asked the wizards around her.

 

Bagman, who still had that microphone-swallowing spell on him, winced but wisely didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

 

“Wizards, safety, and common sense,” she muttered, slumping in her seat.

 

“No one would seriously think that anyone with a brain would have jumped,” Malfoy said silkily.

 

Sirius let out a bark of a laugh. “Oh, I’m sure none of us would claim that we would be so… weak-willed as to jump when someone called,” he said, eyes narrowed.

 

Harry looked at them both, then at Jenna, who rolled her eyes. Director Bones was the only responsible adult in this box that she actually knew. Fudge was wincing at the reminder of his advisor and bank account’s version of his personal history.

 

Which is why it didn’t take Sirius long to look outside their tent, when the screaming started, and say, with depressing certainty, “Malfoy and his buddies got drunk and started a riot.”

 

“Sporting events usually involve riots,” Jenna said, trying to finger comb her hair while jamming her feet into the hiking boots she’d picked out for the trip. Harry was getting his shoes on as well, wand in his hand. The world had forced the kid to be ready to fight, and not only that, to think of the fight as inevitable.

 

Bastard world.

 

“Mmm, but this is Death Eater style rioting,” Sirius said, looking cold and distant. “They have the family who runs the campground in the air. There’s at least a dozen of them. Jenna, take Harry, go past the Weasley tent if possible, get whatever ghosts you can summon, and hide in the woods. Stay there until Nadia or I find you.”

 

“Nadia?” Harry asked.

 

“Friend of ours, lovely woman, chances of her staying out of this are zilch,” Jenna said. “And I play babysitter.”

 

“You can’t shoot them,” Sirius said, a touch apologetically. “The Ministry would take offense. And Jenna,” he added, grimly, “put a hood on.”

 

They found the Weasleys as Arthur was splitting them up, and Jenna took a last look at the knot of wizards, pulling the shockingly blue cloak Sirius had gotten her over her face a little more.

 

The crowd of rioting wizards was growing larger, and Jenna knew if they found her, she’d be up in the air, if not dead, probably in some agonizing way she would be having nightmares about.

 

This is the world I married into, she thought, oddly calm. And something is going to give. And I am not going to be the one to give.

 

So they went into the trees, and under the curtain of darkness she tried to keep count, but they were tripping over unseen branches, every crack of a twig and rustle of a leaf sounding as loud as an explosion, added to the chaos of the other fleeing wizards.

 

“I hate every aspect of this,” she muttered. “Harry, do you mind spending next summer with my extended family? We can travel a bit, meet the cousins, my godmothers…”

 

Someone snorted.

 

“That sounds brilliant,” Harry said, feverently. “Will I have to run for my life?”

 

Jenna thought about it as Ron tripped again and Hermione cracked and summoned a light. “...Probably not? I don’t want to swear.”

 

“Good enough.”

 

“How touching,” and Jenna twirled around, hands clenched into fists, settling into a boxer’s stance, before realizing that it was a kid about Harry’s age. “Though I thought you would all be long gone. Wouldn’t want either of them spotted, would you?”

 

Jenna grinned, baring her teeth. “Oh, kiddo. If you think I’m helpless, you really are an idiot.” Aunt Lucy would laugh, and laugh, and her husband… probably shouldn’t be woken up to this mess.

 

Nor should Auntie Dinah and her daughter, but for different reasons.

 

“You, they wouldn’t stop at just making you flash your knickers,” the kid- Malfoy’s son, she remembered, the one who glared at Sirius when he made the reference to his father’s past. “You need to be made an example of. You have to be sent out to hide with the kids while your traitor husband tries to ruin things?”

 

“And your parents are putting words in your mouth,” Jenna said, really, really hoping that Sirius or Nadia hit the fucker with something nasty.

 

“They’re probably out there with masks,” Ron said, standing slightly between her and the boy.

 

“Sirius said that,” Harry said. “I wonder how many other people know- or guess?”

 

With that, the boy- Draco, that was his name- stumbled off with a hasty threat.

 

Jenna really, really, just wanted this whole mess over and done with, and to head home. Fuck it all, she was taking Sirius, she was taking Harry, and they were going back to the US. she would take a job at Gawker or whatever, and she might just blow the wizarding world’s secrecy out of the water as a precaution.

 

That crowd of rioting, vicious people had only grown larger, after all, and even kindly, gossipy Arthur occasionally said things that were shockingly offensive.

 

She shivered in her dark blue cape, leading them further into the woods.

  
  


**_September_ **

 

The World Cup disaster was still in the one newspaper when Harry got on the Express, and Ian Fells had decided to call them.

 

They couldn’t go to his town in Kent, and he couldn’t go to Kent, so Sirius, with a manic sort of humor, had decided to take her to Cornwall to meet him. Cornwall was, after all, full of the sort of wizards were creeped out by and kept most of them away.

 

Tintagel still had a decent amount of tourists, and Ian was able to blend in seamlessly, waiting for them at a cafe.

 

“Black,” he said, waiting for Sirius to lay down his odd variation on the silencing charm.

 

“What was so important?” Sirius asked, shoulders stiff.

 

“I heard you were involved in that sport riot debacle,” Ian said, eyes never lighting on anyone for too long. Jenna had already found a ghost the previous day and asked if they could scout for anyone out of place.

 

None of them were feeling entirely safe.

 

“Ah, Rita Skeeter,” Sirius said, biting into his meal. Jenna had heard quite a bit on Rita Skeeter, who seemed to be anti-Ministry one day, anti-vampire the next, anti-anything people could be frightened of any day.

 

Basically, the trashy sort of tabloid journalist that Jenna had always gotten pissy about. Especially when people thought Jenna was that sort of trashy tabloid journalist.

 

She’d never, ever written a Bat Boy article.

 

Skeeter had mentioned Sirius in an offhand sort of way that linked him more closely with the rioters than the rescuers, and questioned his sanity.

 

Jenna wondered if she could borrow the name of someone in Sirius’ friend group to write her own articles for wizards. It might be fun.

 

“We’re fine, but I’m pretty sure an email would have confirmed that,” she said instead. “Y’know, a few weeks ago.”

 

He scowed. “Dead Girl, I’m trying to be helpful. Look, I asked a few people- the family of that clairaudient I know, a few people I actually trust, about your powers.”

 

She perked up. “Anything useful?”

 

“Mostly puzzled- communication with the dead on any level is pretty rare, and is usually limited to a specific person who is sensitive for whatever reason,” Ian said, repeating what she already knew. “One or two knew about Annwn hounds, and a book dealer I know promised to find a volume he remembered. But the big thing is that there have been a few people who have been looking into books on necromancy, and not the type you do. Rituals, sacrifice, shit like that. Crazy wizard shit, mostly.”

 

Sirius frowned, clearly remembering what Harry had told them about his vision of Voldemort. He hadn’t recognized the man who was helping him, but something was being done to keep spirit and flesh together.

 

Jenna wasn’t sure how much to tell Ian, though. Emma got more, because Emma was fond of her, had her own, clear goals, and was utterly ruthless and understandable to Jenna in that. They didn’t know Ian as well.

 

“And the Dark Mark was shown over the woods,” Sirius said, frowning. “But I don’t think the person was part of the rioters. If anything, they scared the rioters.” The rioters had been drunk, discontent, and bent on reliving their glory days. The person who laid the Mark… had been an opportunist as well, but the rioters had simply been anti-muggle, malicious, and drunk on their own power. Whoever had cast the Mark had been one of the true believers, one of the ones like Bellatrix who should have been too unsubtle to stay out of Azkaban.

 

Perhaps it had been someone who had snuck into the country from exile.

 

He’d need to focus on that- the Ministry seemed ready to dismiss it, but something about it clicked wrong to his mind.

 

“That’s… terrifying,” Ian said. “See, this is why I hate wizards. Multiple hate groups, and then they get magic!”

 

Jenna gave an apologetic grin. “So if we’re going to assume that if it was part of the chaos there, it might have been the magic user who conjured up the creepy Doom Signal?”

 

“Voldemort did like to dabble in that sort of thing,” Sirius admitted. “So if he’s slowly working his way back to a real body…”

 

“Fuck,” Ian said, glowering at them both. “I’m going to warn a few people, tell them to get ready to get out of the country if that’s the case. Last time they knew something about us, and people who couldn’t defend themselves went missing.” He scowled. “I’m leaving you an envelope- and yes, I’m feeling like James Bond, only black and with a very disappointing lack of sexy, lethal women on my arm. This spy shit is driving me crazy.”

 

“And a bit scrawny,” Sirius teased, earning him a scowl.

 

“I don’t get any complaints,” Ian said with a grin. “Or do you want to hear what my last girlfriend called me?”

 

“And with that bit of potential TMI, anything else?” Jenna said.

 

“Just be careful,” Ian said, unexpectedly serious. “One of the people I spoke to said that your power could lead you so far down the roads to death that you might not come back.”

 

And wasn’t that comforting.

 

_**October** _

 

Sirius was listless, as the leaves turned burning bright and fell, and Halloween crept up on them. On Halloween, he nearly refused to get out of bed, pale and hungover.

 

Jenna cut up some apples and pulled out the peanut butter, making some mint tea and bringing it up.

 

“You need to wake up,” she said, softly. “C’mon, Sirius. I need you to get up, even if you just eat a bit and go downstairs, okay?”

 

Damnit, she needed to get him professional help. He’d had smaller lapses of the sort- and she wanted to do it before, because twelve years in Azkaban, after all.

 

What could she do?

 

Sirius sat up, staring at her. “Can’t I have today?”

 

“You had last night,” she said, ruffling his hair. “I brought you a hangover cure.” He gulped it gratefully.

 

He ate slowly, and she kept the chat careful, catching his interest a few times, and eventually he got changed, and she managed to get him to check over some of his motorcycle parts, getting him to laugh as she sang off-key.

 

“I love you,” she said, before getting soup and rolls for dinner. He stares at her, and she wonders if it is the first time she has said it without a joke to lighten it.

 

It couldn’t be, could it?

 

“Tell me a story?” she asked, sitting on the grass and ignoring the slight freezing feeling in her fingers, as Sirius launches into the tale of James proposing to Lily, losing the ring, and trying to transfigure a toy-machine ring into a copy of the real one until Remus had found the real one in a stash of explosives powder and came apparating in just as James got down on one knee.

 

_**November** _

 

The owl came around the same time as the Daily Prophet, Hedwig looking between them and ignoring the post owl with a dignity that would make a cat proud.

 

“I’ll take the paper, you take the letter,” Jenna said, practically. She took the paper and stared at the headline as Sirius used his butter knife to open the letter.

 

It was a fact only known to a few people that Jenna, while very good at hiding when she was ruffled, could occasionally hit notes that would give bats migraines. Generally, it took a partial fall through rotten floorboards or someone putting a hand up her skirt for that to happen.

 

“Sweet Jesus on rocket powered roller skates, what the flying fuck was Dumbledore THINKING,” she started, before launching into an inventive, thankfully lower-pitched, multilingual batch of curses that would possibly banish all ghosts from a mile radius.

 

Make that a five mile radius, Sirius thought, staring at Harry’s letter. Someone had entered him into the Triwizard Tournament, despite Dumbledore swearing that no one could do that. And thinking through Harry’s account, did someone seriously manage to do that by cutting off a bit of his name and carrying it over the age line?

 

He let out a low growl of his own and made up his mind to go to Hogwarts and have a word or six with the Headmaster.

 

“Why would they want Harry in this?” she asked him, finally.

 

“People die in the tournaments, to showcase that Harry, despite his reputation is still fourteen, because international eyes are going to be on the tournament…” Sirius frowned. “Like at the Cup?”

 

“Like at the Cup,” Jenna agreed, frowning. “You think the two are related?”

 

“I think it’s worth checking out. The Dark Mark attacker was probably a faithful believer who looked down on those he thought of as fairweather, and Harry is the symbol of his lord’s defeat,” Sirius frowned. “Though how did he get in?”

 

“We’re going to have to find out, aren’t we?” she asked, green eyes intent.

 

Sirius looked at her, oddly solemn. “You know this is the year and the second day. You can walk away now, by what the Ministry said.”

 

She rubbed his free hand. “I’m not leaving, dammit. I hoped the lack of suitcases convinced you.”

 

“Glad to hear it,” he said. “So, Hogwarts, then?”

 

“Sure,” she grinned. “Do I get to boss people around again?”

 

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Empress,” he said, grinning as he imagined siccing her on them.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the title is from Yeats' The Stolen Child- Jenna explicitly links up the fairy lands and the wizarding world, despite the bit where she played Janet to Sirius' Tam Lin last time. (Well, it was dementors, and Fudge, not the Fairy Queen, but...) 
> 
> I think I owe a lot of this to Ellen Kushner's fabulous Thomas the Rhymer, now that I'm actually writing it out.
> 
> The Sussan Reimer is an old ghost story from outside of Philadelphia, 
> 
> As for the Annwn Hound/Innana's Hound question on Jenna's powers... Annwn was shamelessly borrowed from the Welsh Underworld, and the idea that the Wild Hunt is made up of the souls of the dead.
> 
> Innana is due to her very well reconstructed (for its age) story of the goddess' descent to the underworld. Also the bit where she gets pissy and threatens to sic a zombie army on people. The zombie t-rex is, of course, a tip of the hat to the Dresden Files. Jamie is, of course, Outlander's Jamie


End file.
